Scientist Counting Whales from Outer Space

Apparently, some things are easier to count from great distances and whales are one such item. Scientists have come up with a novel use for satellite imagery involving high resolution cameras to tally the whale population, or at least those that are at the surface of the ocean.

Thus far, the most accurate method of counting whales involves using the human eye to manually count the sea mammals from photographic imagery taken from the decks of ships or positions on the shore overlooking the ocean. Now, the latest automated process came to within a 10% error rate of the manual process.

“As the resolution of the satellites increases and our image analysis improves, we should be able to monitor many more species and in other types of location,” study author Peter Fretwell told the BBC. “It should be possible to do total population counts and in the future track the trajectory of those populations.”

The latest advancement is considered an important step to being able to automate the counting of whales. This is in part because the satellite imagery allows much greater size quadrants to be examined for whales.

“The other dimension of it is that many marine mammal researchers have been killed flying in small planes while surveying whales,” Vicky Rowntree, director of the Ocean Alliance’s Southern Right Whale Program who studies the Valdes whale, told the BBC. “So my great desire is to get us out of small planes circling over whales and to be able to do it remotely.

In addition, the automated approach costs much less than the manual method. The program is still in the “proof of concept” phase. Should the program be rolled out, it would allow a fist ever total population count and even be able to track migratory patterns. This opens up a wide spectrum of possibilities and studies into whales which would be backed by scientific research.

On The Web:
Scientist Counting Whales from Outer Space
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26075274